Infamous America - SALEM Ep. 4 | "The Rope"

Episode Date: October 24, 2018

The Salem Witch Trials finally begin, and they produce scandalous moments that no one will forget. The results are predictable and the executions begin. And even as the accused are condemned to hang, the afflicted girls name new witches. But doubts about the trials slowly creep into the public's voice... For more details, please www.blackbarrelmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A quote, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Exodus 22. 18. On May 10, 1692, the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak claimed its first victim. Sarah Osborne was 49 years old when she died in jail. She had been in jail for three months, and today's prisons would be luxury accommodations compared to prisons in 1692. They were stone cells that sometimes had a window and sometimes didn't. They were furnaces in the summer and freezers in the winter.

The first three women accused of witchcraft were sent to jail in February, in possibly the worst winter on record, and there was no source of heat in the cells. Jails were infected with fleas and lice that carried a sickness known as jail fever, and that was listed as the cause of death of Sarah Osborne. The smell would have been unimaginable, unwashed bodies, chamber pots, rotting food, vomit and dead rodents all mixed together. One observer saw Boston's jail in 1686 and said it was a grave of the living. These were the conditions in which somewhere around 30 people lived while they waited for trial,

including Sarah Good's five-year-old daughter Dorcas. The child lived with her mom in jail, and the prison keeper had to make a special set of chains because none existed for children. To add insult to injury, prisoners had to pay the jailer for their time in jail. From the moment they arrived, the prison keeper kept a tally, and even if the person was eventually allowed to go free, he or she couldn't leave until they paid their debt to the jailer. This tragic rule would take at least one life during the crisis of 1692,

but that would happen many months from now. First, new Massachusetts governor William Phipps had to establish, a court of nine judges that would conduct the official Salem witch trials. Everything up to now had just been the undercard. This was the main event. Welcome to infamous America, a show that explores some of the darkest and most controversial people in events in American history. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and in season one, we're telling the story of the Salem Witch Trials. The people of Salem Village had endured five months of an escalating witchcraft crisis.

Their daughters and wives and neighbors and cousins had become afflicted, and the symptoms had grown worse over time. Preliminary hearings had been chaotic scandals, and dozens had been accused and sent to jail. Now, the situation was as serious as it could get. Massachusetts had its new charter. Courts were legally back in session. It was time to decide, once and for all,

who was guilty and who was innocent, and there was only one punishment for the guilty. This is Salem, Chapter 4, The Rope. In the final days before the return of increased Mather and Governor Phipps, Mary Warren's case continued to interest magistrates Hathorne and Corwin. She was unique. She had suffered afflictions, but then they had stopped when John Proctor threatened to beat her, or maybe made good on his threats.

She was the only afflicted girl who sat in jail, and while she did, her torments had returned. The magistrates went to her day, after day to hear more of her story, and every time they showed up, she had violent seizures and convulsions. Now she was being attacked by the spectres of Anne Pudiator and Alice Parker, and the new trend of killer spirits continued with these two women. Not only were they witches who sent their spectres to hurt Mary, they admitted to murder as well. According to Mary, Anne Poudiator's specter bragged of having poisoned her first husband and having nearly killed another

man. Alice Parker's spirit said she had drowned a young boy, and Mary went on to say that Alice was responsible for the death of her own mother and the sickness of her sister. Then Mary introduced a trend of her own, the use of poppets. A poppet during the witch trials was basically the equivalent of what we would call today a voodoo doll. It was a cloth doll that was used by witches to hurt victims. If you hurt the doll, the person who was associated with it would feel it. Mary said Alice Parker had shown her a poppet and a needle and threatened to stab her in the heart if she didn't help Alice hurt the poppet. Mary went on to accuse Abigail Soames, whom she said had also committed murder. And Mary wasn't alone in her continued attacks.

Mary Walcott and Mercy Lewis were tormented by new specters. Anne Putnam Jr.'s father filed complaints on her behalf against nine new suspects. Constables stayed busy in early May, traveling the country. countryside to arrest all the witches. But they still couldn't find John Willard. He had been accused by Anne many days earlier, but he had apparently fled the area. His specter, however, had not. It carried out maybe the most diabolical act of the last five months, and Mary Walcott and Mercy Lewis were there to witness it. By mid-May 1692, the afflicted girls were not merely victims of witches. They were seers. They were shown things that no one else

could see. They could now talk to the dead. People traveled for miles around to learn the answers to mysterious problems in their lives. On May 16th, Mary Walcott and Mercy Lewis were called to the home of Henry Wilkins, north of Ann Putnam Jr.'s' house. This was the area where the elusive John Willard had lived. He had married into the Wilkins family and had tried to hide with them when he found out he was wanted for witchcraft. They had refused him, and he had disappeared. But his spectre had tormented Daniel Wilkins and elderly Bray Wilkins for weeks. The family had brought Anne Jr. to the house just yesterday to see if she could tell them what was happening. She pronounced the situation dire.

She said John Willard's specter swore it would kill Daniel. Now, the very next day, Mary Walcott and Mercy Lewis were in the Wilkins home to witness the Spector's wrath. Family members and neighbors watched Daniel struggle to breathe. Mary and Mercy said they could see John Willard choking Daniel and a woman named Sarah Buckley was pressing down on his chest. The specter of Sarah Buckley had previously attacked Mary Walcott and now it was working with John Willard's specter to kill Daniel Wilkins. The adults in the room could clearly see Daniel choke and gasp,

but they couldn't see the spirits who were attacking him. After a short time, Daniel Wilkins died. And Reverend Samuel Paris recorded the death in his notes as killed by witchcraft. Villagers of Salem had just watched a person die from witch attacks for the first time. Of course, only Mary and Mercy could see the full picture, but the family members and neighbors didn't doubt them.

Several miles up the road, 11-year-old Phoebe Chandler of Andover was assaulted by Martha Carrier's spirit. The afflicted girls of Salem had seen Martha Carrier's specter at the meeting of witches in Paris's field and had dubbed her the queen of hell, but her spirit hadn't hurt them yet. As Phoebe's condition worsened, she was sure Martha Carrier was her attacker.

At the same time, glorious news came to the afflicted girls. John Willard had been found. He was caught 40 miles west in Lancaster. He was transported to Salem Village to be examined by Hathorne and Corwin. The magistrates had been examining accused witches four, five, and six at a time for days. There seemed to be a never-ending list of witches attacking the girls, and now it was finally John Willard's turn to be questioned,

and he had a lot to answer for. Willard's examination featured many of the same characteristics that were now common in the meeting house. The girls suffered extreme seizures and mimicked his movements. Willard explained why he had fled that he'd feared for his life and denied accusations of witchcraft and murder. Then the magistrates applied two tests that would become increasingly popular as the examinations progressed, the touch test and the Lord's Prayer test.

If a witch touched a person that he or she had afflicted, that person would become well again. Mary Warren, who was now firmly back in the ranks of the afflicted, suffered a terrible seizure, and she was carried to the stand so Willard could touch her. When he did, her suffering stopped. Next, Willard was told to say the Lord's Prayer. It was a well-known fact that a witch could not utter the Lord's Prayer, a reality that would cause amazement in the future. But for now, Willard tried five times to say the prayer aloud,

but stumbled all five times. He was flustered. He said he could do it yesterday, but now, under intense pressure, he failed. Like dozens and dozens of others, he was taken to jail. And by now, the jail in Boston, which had become the central prison for suspected witches, was overflowing. Governor Phipps had spent the first two weeks of his return from England rebuilding the government of Massachusetts under its new charter. And now he finally got around to getting the court system back up and running. To handle the witchcraft cases, he created a court of oryer and terminer, which was a French name that meant to hear and determine.

Nine judges were appointed, and it's important to remember the that none of them had any legal training. They were just wealthy merchants and or prominent citizens. Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton was the Chief Justice. The other justices were Nathaniel Saltenthal, Waite Winthrop,

Peter Sargent, John Richards, Samuel Sewell, Bartholomew Gedney, and John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin. Any five could hear a case, but they had to include Stoughton, Gedney, or Richards. There was a flourish of witchcraft activity in the final days of May before the first of four court sessions. Complaints were filed against 13 people in two days, highlighted by Wilmot Red, Elizabeth Howe, and the Queen of Hell, Martha Carrier.

Judges Hathorne and Corwin, along with Judge Gedney and Attorney General Thomas Newton, conducted tiring examinations in the Salem Village Meeting House. Nearly everyone who was accused was sent to jail to await trial. And on the eve of the first trial, Judge John Richards met with his minister, Cotton Mather, to receive guidance on the challenging times ahead. Reverend Mather admitted this was a difficult situation. The road the judges must travel was dark and tangled. A credible confession was the best proof of guilt.

But what did Cotton Mather mean by credible? That was up to the judges to determine. If they couldn't get a confession, there were several. things that could be considered suspicious, not proof necessarily, but suspicious. Knowledge of something that was humanly impossible to know was one, which marks on the body, the presence of poppets, a wound on a suspect that matched a wound given to the specter. Such as the time when Samuel Sibley swung his walking stick and hit the specter of Sarah Good, and then later that night, Sarah Good appeared with a bloody arm.

And lastly, failure of the Lord's Prayer Test. But, Mather warned, the Lord's Prayer Test should never be admitted as evidence. He probably didn't know it had already been used numerous times. The problem was, the devil could cause any of these suspicious things without ever using a witch at all. He could make you think that the specter that was attacking you was from a witch, but in reality, it was him. and he often impersonated the very people you would suspect of being witches. That devil, he was crafty, and these trials would not be easy for Judge Richards and his colleagues. They had a heavy burden to bear, but they must bear it.

The colony depended on them. On June 2, 1692, the court of Oyer and Terminer convened the first witch trial in Salem. Attorney General Thomas Newton scanned the long list of imprisoned suspects and chose the first person to prosecute. Bridget Bishop. The case against her was strong. He could start with an easy win. On the morning of the first trial,

Anne Putnam, Sr. was haunted by ghosts of dead people and tormented by specters that threatened to kill her. While she was attacked in Salem Village, a jury of nine women and a surgeon examined female suspects in the jail. They searched Bridget Bishop, Rebecca Nurse, Alice Parker, Sarah Good. Elizabeth Proctor and Susanna Martin from head to toe for witch marks. The invasive and humiliating procedure found odd marks on Bishop, Proctor, and Nurse. Although at least one woman disagreed that these were witch marks.

The six accused women were joined on the docket by Tichiba, John Proctor, and John Willard. The nine prisoners were led around the block from the jail to the Salem Town House, a two-story brick building that had a grammar school classroom on the first floor and a courtroom on the second. Chief Justice William Stoughton presided, and most of the judges were in attendance. Bridget Bishop was led into the courtroom and the grand jury read her list of indictments. She pled not guilty, and then the testimony against her began. The afflicted girls detailed all the terrible tortures they had suffered. Bishop had tempted them to sign the devil's book.

She had nearly drowned one of them. She had struck them with her eyebeams during the examination in Salem Village and had twisted them with easy motions of her body. She had beaten one of them with iron rods, and she had taken part in the bloody sacrament during the witch meeting in Reverend Paris' field. The girls talked of ghosts who had been murdered by Bridget Bishop, though no one seemed to realize the suspicions of murder

actually came from gossip of a woman named Sarah Bishop, not Bridget Bishop. Sarah Bishop was a bawdy tavern keeper and somehow gossip about her had been transferred to Bridget. Other witnesses dredged up 20 years' worth of suspicions that added up to a mountain of circumstantial evidence,

everything from problems with livestock, to theft, to several poppets that were found in a wall of her house by a neighbor. The judges and prosecutors fired questions at Bridget and they picked apart the inconsistencies in her answers. And for those who might be wondering, all the accused faced this intense questioning alone. There were no such things as defense attorneys in Salem in 1692. Bridget continued to swear she was innocent, and Chief Justice Stoughton handed her case over to the jury.

They found her guilty of witchcraft, and her punishment was death. Over the next eight days, new specters attacked the afflicted girls. New ghosts appeared to them with stories of murder. New arrest warrants were sworn out for witches. New examinations took place in the Salem Town Meeting House. The entire process continued without let up, even as the first suspect awaited execution. In Maine, the Wabanaki Indians continued to destroy towns and torture prisoners. In Connecticut, a special court convened to hear the first cases of witchcraft.

And on June 10th, eight days after she was found guilty, Bridget Bishop was loaded onto the the back of a cart and rolled through Salem Town toward Gallo's Hill. It was a hot Friday morning, sometime between 8 a.m. and noon. Bridget was put on a cart and flanked by guards on horseback. The sheriff and his men led the procession to a pasture southwest of town. They stopped at a ledge that overlooked a marsh pool. A crowd followed in their wake. Several of the afflicted girls were there.

At the appointed spot, Bridget was taken out of the cart, and moved halfway up a ladder. A noose was suspended from a tree or a temporary gallows above her. A blindfold was wrapped around her face. Her hands were tied behind her back. The noose was looped around her neck. She proclaimed her innocence to the end. And then she was pushed off the ladder or it was kicked out from under her.

She dropped, and the rope bit into her skin, choking her, but probably not breaking her neck. A quick and painless death was really. Nearly everyone strangled to death over the course of many agonizing minutes as their bodies thrashed and convulsed. However it happened, the sheriff certified that Bridget Bishop was hanged by the neck until dead, the first person executed for witchcraft in Salem. Her body was buried in a shallow grave nearby, and it would have plenty of company soon. Nearly four weeks passed between the first court session and the second, and in that time, criticism surfaced about the witch trials. The whole situation was much bigger and crazier than any other

witch trial in America, and Bridget Bishop had refused to confess even as she was about to be put to death. That kind of steadfast belief in her own innocence caused some people to question the proceedings. One of the most prominent was Nathaniel Salton Stahl, one of the nine judges on the court. He resigned after the execution of Bridget Bishop. By the time the crisis happened in safety, in 1692, witch hunts had almost ended in Europe. Witch trials would end altogether in the 1700s, so the whole concept of prosecuting someone for witchcraft was coming to a close by the time Salem flared up.

In Europe, the use of spectral evidence was either heavily scrutinized or flatly not allowed by 1692. To convict someone of witchcraft, judges needed more than just the word of a person who said they'd been attacked by the specter of a witch. specter of a witch. Basically, if no one else could see it, it wasn't good enough. The judges in Salem heard the criticism, and they wanted approval of the ministers before they went any further. The minister spent two days writing a lengthy document that they called the return of the ministers.

It was a glorious example of double talk. On one hand, the carefully crafted document praised and supported the efforts of the judges. On the other, it questioned the use of spectral evidence, because the devil could impersonate anyone. More evidence was needed than just this. The ministers also doubted that a person could be hurt or healed by a simple look or touch. They referred the judges to the books written by William Perkins and Richard Bernard,

at least one of which was sitting in the study of Reverend Paris. The books talked about all these things and they should be used for guidance. But then, in the last paragraph of the document, the ministers skillfully returned to praising the judges for their vigorous prosecutions. Two ministers went so far as to preach sermons that questioned or criticized the trials. One even began a petition that warned that if spectral evidence was used, innocent people could be condemned.

Under those conditions, anyone could be a witch, and they'd have no defense. It was a good point. But before the document was finished, a copy of it made its way to the governor's death. Governor Phipps called the petition seditious and scandalous and ordered the minister to pay a fine or be thrown in jail. Presumably the man paid the fine, and he was silent from this point forward. Between the first two court sessions, Rebecca Nurse's family circulated a petition of their own. 39 people signed a document testifying to Rebecca's good behavior. The nurse family blatantly questioned the credibility of several of the afflicted girls.

They did everything they could to undermine the girls and poke holes in their stories. But they would have to wait through numerous trials to see if their plans worked. Attorney General Thomas Newton used the same strategy with Sarah Good that he had with Bridget Bishop. He dredged up her whole history, her father's suicide, her inherited debts, her current destitute lifestyle and her angry disposition. He called witnesses to testify to the mysterious deaths of livestock that they blamed on her. And then, of course, there were the tortures suffered by the afflicted girls during Sarah's examination, and the tortures that were happening right now in the courtroom.

Just three days before the trial, Susanna Sheldon had been found by her neighbors lying on the floor choking, with her hands tied so tightly with a wheel band that it couldn't be untied. It had to be cut off. She blamed Sarah Good for this attack. The case went to the jury, and Sarah Good was found guilty of which. The next day, the court heard the case against Susanna Martin, the woman who had brazenly laughed at the afflicted girls and accused them of being witches themselves during her examination. Susanna Martin's trial required great patience from the judges because the afflicted girls

seized and twisted and convulsed so grotesquely that it was hard to proceed for any length of time. Beyond the usual torments of the afflicted girls, Lieutenant John Allen testified to one of the more bizarre stories of the witch trials. He accused Susanna Martin of cursing his oxen. He said he had gone to collect him from their meadow near Salisbury Beach, but he could only find their hoof prints. He followed the prince and discovered that all 16 oxen had swum across the Miramac River to Plum Island, where they charged madly up and down the length of the island and eluded capture for several days. Two of the older animals eventually left the crazed heard, but the other 14 ran into the ocean and swam toward the horizon.

One turned around and went back to the island, where he resumed his mad dashes up and down the beach. That ox finally wandered home, but the other 13 drowned. This incredible event was Susanna Martin's fault, of course. After several more witnesses testified to a variety of troubles, the case was given to the jury. Reverend Cotton Mather pronounced Susanna Martin one of the most wicked creatures in the world, and the jury found her guilty. It was now time for Rebecca Nurse's trial.

In addition to the witchmarks that had been found on her body a month earlier, the afflicted girls testified to all the things her specter had done during the six months of torment. According to the girls, Rebecca had bit, pinched, and stabbed them. Her specter had confessed to numerous murders. It sat with the devil in several satanic meetings. But unlike other trials, Rebecca's family fought back. They presented the petition attesting to her innocence. Rebecca's adult daughter testified that she'd seen one of the afflicted girls

prick herself with a pin during the proceedings and then blamed the attack on Rebecca. They also used the sermons of the ministers who were critical of the trials in their defense. They cited the return of the ministers' document during their testimony. to call into question spectral evidence. The testimony of Rebecca's advocates seemed to have an effect. It looked like the jury might be swayed, and they were thrilled to hear the jury return

a verdict of not guilty. It was a huge victory, but it was short-lived. The afflicted girls reacted so hideously that it caught the judges by surprise. Chief Justice Stoughton reminded the jury of something Rebecca had said to two of the other accused, what did these persons give in evidence?

against me, when they used to come among us. Stoughton thought Rebecca was admitting guilt. He questioned Rebecca about her comment, but she was sick and confused and hard of hearing, and in the havoc, she didn't respond. Stoughton assumed her silence meant she was admitting guilt. The jury changed its verdict. Rebecca Nurse was found guilty and sentenced to death. But the nurse family wouldn't accept it. They continued to campaign for her innocence, and actually persuaded Governor Phipps to give her a reprieve. But that was short-lived also. The accusers screamed to high heaven,

and several men of Salem convinced the governor to take back his reprieve. Rebecca Nurse was once again sentenced to death, and this time it was final. The trials of Elizabeth Howe and Sarah Wilde's followed the dramatic events of the Rebecca Nurse case, but they were more routine than Rebecca's. They were accused of torturing and tormenting the afflicted girls, as well as mysteriously killing livestock and various people over the years. Both were found guilty in relatively swift trials.

After the verdicts, the court rested. The second session of the Salem witch trials ended. On July 12th, Chief Justice William Stoughton signed the death warrants of Sarah Good, Susanna Martin, Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Wilde, and Rebecca Nurse. One week later, the sheriff loaded the five women into a cart and drove them through Salem to the ledge on the edge of town. It was customary for the condemned to face execution with a spirit of forgiveness so their souls would be clean when they arrived in heaven.

Sarah Good was having none of that. Reverend Nicholas Noyes urged her to confess so she wouldn't die a liar. She said, you are a liar. I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life, God will give you blood to drink. In perhaps her only act of witchcraft, Reverend Noyes died years later, bleeding from the mouth, when a blood vessel burst in his head. Despite the late drama of Sarah Goode's curse, all five women were hanged without incident. Their bodies were buried nearby, but the family of Rebecca Nurse would not let her lie in such conditions. That night, under the cover of darkness, they set out from Rebecca's farm and rode a small boat up the river to the marsh pool at the base of the execution ledge.

They uncovered Rebecca's body and carried her back downstream to her farm. They created a small family graveyard and laid her to rest on her own land. You can still visit the memorial today and see the river through the trees that they used to spirit her body away from the execution site. While the judges conducted the witch trials in Salem Town in June and July, they also traveled to Salem Village two or three times a week to conduct examinations. Despite the trials, the crisis in Salem Village had not slowed down. The afflicted girls accused new people every day, and every day men filed complaints with the judges and a small group rode out to the village to question the new suspects. One of the few confessions they received was from Anne Foster, the woman who had flown on a pole to the great witch meeting with her daughter Mary Lacey and Martha Carrier. Anne initially denied charges of witchcraft, but when she saw the fits of Mary Warren, Mary Walcott, Elizabeth Hubbard, and Anne Putnam, Jr., she agreed that she had made a pact with the devil. He had come to her six months earlier and promised her prosperity, and from that time onward,

she had been able to afflict people with a glance. But, even though she admitted guilt, she did deflect some of the responsibility. She said it was Martha Carrier, the queen of hell, who convinced her to start hurting these girls three weeks ago. Anne was taken to jail, and when the judges questioned her in prison, she suddenly admitted to all kinds of new details. She had actually been serving the devil for six years, not six months. She had bewitched numerous people and animals. Martha Carrier told her to use poppets and pins to hurt several victims, and if she refused, Martha would tear her to pieces.

The judges clearly had to keep her in jail to await trial. In the wake of her confession, her daughter Mary Lacey and her granddaughter, Mary Lacey Jr., were arrested and held for questioning. As the crisis continued steadily in Salem Village, it was still spreading throughout New England. Cases were happening in Andover, Topsfield, Ipswich, Rowley, Haverill, and Stanford and New Haven, Connecticut.

In Boston, on August 1st, the day before the third court session, Reverend Increase Mather and seven other ministers held an emergency meeting at Harvard College to try to answer an urgent question. Could the devil impersonate the innocent? This was obviously important just on principle,

but it was specifically important right now because of a letter written by John Proctor. John and his fellow prisoners were desperate. Six people had already been executed and two more had died in jail. John and his wife Elizabeth and four other prisoners were due in court tomorrow. Their time was up. He wrote the letter on behalf of himself and the other accused, and they begged the ministers to help them get more objective trials. Spectral evidence was the key to the whole thing.

The accused knew they were innocent, but they believed the devil had tricked the judges, the juries, and pretty much everyone in general, to the point where the accused were condemned before they even walked into the courtroom. And John was right. The present system in Salem was a reversal of what had been happening in Europe

and earlier in America. Traditionally, juries acted with more emotion and were quick to convict. Judges were usually more level-headed and cautious. They were typically harder on the accusers than the accused. Previously, if you accused someone of witchcraft, you had to have a pretty strong case to get a conviction because the judges would pick you apart.

But in Salem, it was the opposite. The judges assumed the accused were guilty immediately, and they believed the accusers automatically. So one of the most difficult questions to answer over the last three 300 years has been, why? Like all answers in Salem, it probably involves a combination of factors and we'll never know for sure. Many of the men in power, from the governor's council to the judges to the local constables

were militia commanders, and French and Indian forces were still attacking the frontier after two decades of fighting. Even now, as the third session was about to begin, terrified citizens of Gloucester hid in their garrison as they prepared for an attack. So maybe on some subconscious level these men thought they could redeem themselves by ending this witchcraft outbreak. They also firmly believed the devil was at work in their colony and was the cause of many of their problems. So by hunting down his witches, they might be saving the colony. Again, we'll never know for sure, but one thing we do know is that Chief Justice Stoughton was insistent that a specter could not represent

represent an innocent person. And since he exerted so much influence on the jury, the prisoners appealed to the ministers for help. John Proctor knew that Martha Carrier's two sons, who had recently confessed to witchcraft, had done so only after they had been tied by their necks and heels. So people were confessing after what was basically torture. They were confessing because they simply broke down under intense questioning. And some surely confessed because because they had figured out the system. If you confessed, you were allowed to live so you could name other people and help the judges find all the witches. It was the ultimate irony of the Salem witch trials. Not a single person who confessed to witchcraft was executed. The meeting of the

ministers probably had little effect, if any. The judges had already ignored the advice of the ministers in the document, the return of the ministers. So they probably didn't care if the ministers thought the devil could impersonate the innocent or not. On August 2nd, 1692, the trials of John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor, John Willard, George Jacobs, Sr., Martha Carrier, and Reverend George Burroughs began. The reported King and Queen of Hell

were about to have their day in court, and the Queen was up first. Martha Carrier pled not guilty to the charge of witchcraft. The afflicted girls convulsed so badly they thought they were dying. So many people testified against Martha that the judges didn't even bother to call her two sons,

who had just confessed to witchcraft themselves. Martha maintained her innocence, but the jury found her guilty. John and Elizabeth Proctor were up next. They presented petitions signed by a total of 51 people who swore the couple would never engage in witchcraft. But the afflicted girls

told their stories of spectral torments and messages from ghosts who had been murdered by Elizabeth. John and Elizabeth were found guilty. John would face the gallows soon, but Elizabeth was granted a stay of execution because she was pregnant. She would now face the horrible conditions of the Boston jail, and then give birth, and then be executed. John Willard was next in court.

Anne Putnam, Jr. testified to the ghosts who had told her about the people he had killed. Other witnesses testified to the tragic death of his cousin Daniel Wilkins and various other accusations. John Willard was found guilty. George Jacobs, Sr., who had to walk with two canes, faced a battery of ghostly murder accusations. He was predictably found guilty. And finally came the one everyone was waiting for. Reverend's Increase Mather and Diodot Lawson joined what was called a vast concourse of people who made the trip to Salem Town

to watch the trial of Reverend George Burroughs. The audience packed the courtroom for the trial. George Burroughs was not a mere defendant. He was the defendant. He was feared to be the leader of an evil plot to destroy the churches of New England. He administered the sacraments of Satan. He commanded whole companies of witches

and told them to use puppets and thorns to affect others. He wanted to take down Salem Village. He had killed his first two wives, and probably many other people, too. Or at least that's what the afflicted girls said. They testified to the months of torture they had experienced at the hands of his specter. Burroughs tried to counter their accusations, but the girls collapsed into seizures again and again. Chief Justice Stoughton demanded Burroughs to explain why this was happening if he was not causing it. Burroughs had no answer.

Suddenly, the afflicted girls froze all at once. They stared at the same spot. None of them moved. None of them blinked. None of them spoke. Finally, they snapped out of the trance. The judges immediately questioned the girls separately to find out what they'd seen. They all said they'd seen four ghosts of people Burroughs had killed,

his two wives and the wife and daughter of Reverend Lawson, who was in the audience. Witness after witness testified to all manner of accusation. Nine people testified to his inhuman strength. Others testified to classic accounts of bewitched livestock. Others testified to his harsh treatment of his wives. And then he sealed his own fate. He gave the jury a paper to read that stated there were no such things as witches.

He said it was impossible for a person to make a pact with the devil or to send devils to do someone's bidding, it was a controversial argument from a controversial book called A Candle in the Dark. Among many other things, it brought up a core problem with modern witch trials. Everything the Puritans did was based on the Bible, but a candle in the dark said that the English Bible translation of the word witch was not the same as the one that was defined by English law. Therefore, this whole proceeding was groundless.

If witches didn't exist, and packs with the devil didn't exist, then the people who had been accused were innocent, and the people who had been executed were innocent. And because that couldn't possibly be an option, it was the worst possible argument for George Burroughs to make. The jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death. The third court session had been spectacular, but there were still more explosives to come.

There was one more court session and one more round of guilty verdicts before the fire burned itself out. The execution of George Burroughs would astonish the people of Massachusetts and begin the downfall of the Salem witch trials. That's next time on the finale of Infamous America Season 1, Salem. If you enjoyed the show, please give it a rating and a review wherever you're listening. You can check out our website at blackbarrelmedia.com. and follow us on social media.

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